Step-by-Step guide to Facebook Conversion Tracking

Step 1: Once you log in to your ‘Ads Manager’ tab, click on the Conversion Tracking button on the left side bar.

Step 2: Then click on the ‘Create Conversion Pixel’ tab to begin the process.

Step 3: You will be directed to this pop-up, which will ask you for a:

1. Name: An appropriate name will help you remember what you are tracking. (Example: Lead Generation – GATE Ad)

2. Category: This will help you decide the type of action that you want to track on your site. You can choose from the following:

1. Checkouts

2. Registrations

3. Leads

4. Key Page Views

5. Adds to Cart

6. Other Website Conversions

(For the purpose of this example, we have selected ‘Leads’).

Step 4: You will be able to see a pop-up window with a JavaScript code. This is the code that you will have to add to the page where the conversion will happen. This will let you track the conversions back to ads which you are running on Facebook.

The code should be placed on the page that a user will finally see when the transaction is complete.

Here is the tricky part. The code should not go on all pages. For that matter, it should not even go to the landing page of your product. The code should be placed on the page that a user will finally see when the transaction is complete.

For Example: If you want to track when students register for your GATE coaching, paste the code on the registration confirmation page/thank you page and not on the form that they need to submit.

How do you confirm that your conversion is working properly?

1. Check that the javascript snippet has been placed on the correct conversion page. Visit the page where the pixel has been embedded, right click and go to ‘View Page Source’ to find the pixel. The code should have the tag of the HTML. See image below.

2. Check that Facebook is receiving the conversion events from your website. Go to the conversion tracking tab in your Ads Manager account. There you will see a list of the conversion tracking pixels that you have created. If the conversion tracking pixel has been successfully implemented and a conversion event has been recorded, it will be reflected in the Pixel Status column. If the status shows active, it means that the page which contains the pixel has been viewed by users. If it shows inactive, it means that over the last 24 hours, the page with the pixel has not been viewed.

3.Later, when you  create your Facebook ad , you need to check the track conversions box under the campaign, pricing and schedule tab to enable tracking.

Payment System with Paypal

 

Download the sample 

I received a tutorial requests from my reader that asked to me how to implement payment gateway system with Paypal API. In this post I want to explain how to work with Paypal Sandbox test accounts for payment system development and sending arguments while click buy now button. It’s simple and very easy to integrate in your web projects.

Sample database design for Payment system. Contains there table users,products and sales.

Users

CREATE TABLE `users` (
`uid` int(11) AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
`username` varchar(255) UNIQUE KEY,
`password` varchar(255),
`email` varchar(255) UNIQUE KEY,
)

Products

CREATE TABLE `products`
(
`pid` int(11) AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
`product` varchar(255),
‘product_img` varchar(100),
`price` int(11),
`currency` varchar(10),
)

Sales

CREATE TABLE `sales`
(
`sid` int(11) AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
`pid` int(11),
`uid` int(11),
`saledate` date,
`transactionid` varchar(125),
FOREIGN KEY(uid) REFERENCES users(uid),
FOREIGN KEY(pid) REFERENCES products(pid)
)

Step 1

Create a Paypal Sandbox account at https://developer.paypal.com/

Step 2

Now create test accounts for payment system. Take a look at Sandbox menu left-side top Sandbox->Test Accounts

Step 3

Here I have created two accounts Buyer (personal) and Seller(merchant/business)

products.php
Contains PHP code. Displaying records from products table product image,product name and product price. Here you have to give your business(seller)$paypal_id id. Modify paypal button form return and cancel_return URLs.

<?php
session_start();
require ‘db_config.php’;
$uid=$_SESSION[‘uid’];
$username=$_SESSION[‘username’];
$paypal_url=’https://www.sandbox.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr‘; // Test Paypal API URL
$paypal_id=’your_seller_id‘; // Business email ID
?>

<body>
<h2>Welcome, <?php echo $username;?></h2>
<?php
$result = mysql_query(“SELECT * from products”);
while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))
{
?>
<img src=”images/<?php echo $row[‘product_img’];?>” />
Name: <?php echo $row[‘product’];?>
Price: <?php echo $row[‘price’];?>$
// Paypal Button 
<form action=’<?php echo $paypal_url; ?>‘ method=’post’ name=’form<?php echo $row[‘pid’]; ?&gt;’>
<input type=’hidden’ name=’business’ value=’<?php echo $paypal_id; ?>‘>
<input type=’hidden’ name=’cmd’ value=’_xclick’>
<input type=’hidden’ name=’item_name’ value=’<?php echo$row[‘product’];?>‘>
<input type=’hidden’ name=’item_number’ value=’<?php echo$row[‘pid’];?>‘>
<input type=’hidden’ name=’amount’ value=’<?php echo $row[‘price’];?>‘>
<input type=’hidden’ name=’no_shipping’ value=’1′>
<input type=’hidden’ name=’currency_code’ value=’USD‘>
<input type=’hidden’ name=’cancel_return‘ value=’http://yoursite.com/cancel.php’>
<input type=’hidden’ name=’return‘ value=’http://yoursite.com/success.php’>
<input type=”image” src=”https://paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_buynowCC_LG.gif&#8221; name=”submit”>
</form>

<?php
}
?>
</body>

success.php
Paypal payment success return file. Getting Paypal argument like item_number. Paypal data success.php?tx=270233304D340491B&st=Completed&amt=22.00&cc=USD&cm=&item_number=1

<?php
session_start();
require ‘db_config.php’;
$uid = $_SESSION[‘uid’];
$username=$_SESSION[‘username’];
$item_no = $_GET[‘item_number’];
$item_transaction = $_GET[‘tx’]; // Paypal transaction ID
$item_price = $_GET[‘amt’]; // Paypal received amount
$item_currency = $_GET[‘cc’]; // Paypal received currency type//Getting product details
$sql=mysql_query(“select product,price,currency from producst where pid=’$item_no'”);
$row=mysql_fetch_array($sql);
$price=$row[‘price’];
$currency=$row[‘currency’];//Rechecking the product price and currency details
if($item_price==$price && item_currency==$currency)
{

$result = mysql_query(“INSERT INTO sales(pid, uid, saledate,transactionid) VALUES(‘$item_no’, ‘$uid’, NOW(),’$item_transaction’)”);
if($result)
{
echo “<h1>Welcome, $username</h1>”;
echo “<h1>Payment Successful</h1>”;
}
}
else
{
echo “Payment Failed”;
}
?>

Login with Google Account OAuth

We covered almost all the Open Authentication (OAuth) login systems for Facebook, Twitter, Google plus and Instagram, but unfortunately I missed most important Goolge Open Authentication login. Today I want explain how to implement this for your web project, this script is very quick and sure it helps you to increase your web project registrations.

Database
Sample database design

CREATE TABLE users
(
id INT PRIMARY KEY AUTO_INCREMENT,
email VARCHAR(50) UNIQUE,
fullname VARCHAR(100),
firstname VARCHAR(50),
lastname VARCHAR(50),
google_id VARCHAR(50),
gender VARCHAR(10),
dob VARCHAR(15),
profile_image TEXT,
gpluslink TEXT
)

Step 1: Domain Registration
Add or register your domain at click here.

Step 2: Ownership verification
Verify your domain ownership with HTML file upload or including META tag.

Step 3: OAuth Keys
Google will provide you OAuth consumer key and OAuth consumer secret key.

Step 4: Google APIConsole
Create client ID OAuth Console here.

Step 5:
Create client ID.

Step 6
Here the application OAuth client ID and client secret.

config.php

You can find this in srcfolder, here you have to configure application OAuth keys, Consumer keys and redirection callback URL.

// OAuth2 Settings, you can get these keys at https://code.google.com/apis/console Step 6 keys ‘oauth2_client_id’ => ‘App Client ID’, ‘oauth2_client_secret’ => ‘App Client Secret’,’oauth2_redirect_uri’ => ‘http://yoursite.com/gplus/index.php&#8217;,// OAuth1 Settings Step 3  keys.
‘oauth_consumer_key’ => ‘OAuth Consumer Key’,
‘oauth_consumer_secret’ => ‘OAuth Consumer Secret’,

google_login.php
Google plus login system. Just include the file in index.php

<?php require_once ‘src/apiClient.php’; require_once ‘src/contrib/apiOauth2Service.php’; session_start(); $client = new apiClient(); setApplicationName(“Google Account Login”); $oauth2 = new apiOauth2Service($client); if (isset($_GET[‘code’])) { $client->authenticate(); $_SESSION[‘token’] = $client->getAccessToken(); $redirect = ‘http://&#8217; . $_SERVER[‘HTTP_HOST’] . $_SERVER[‘PHP_SELF’]; header(‘Location: ‘ . filter_var($redirect, FILTER_SANITIZE_URL));}if (isset($_SESSION[‘token’])) {
$client->setAccessToken($_SESSION[‘token’]);
}

if (isset($_REQUEST[‘logout’])) {
unset($_SESSION[‘token’]);
unset($_SESSION[‘google_data’]); //Google session data unset
$client->revokeToken();
}

if ($client->getAccessToken())
{
$user = $oauth2->userinfo->get();
$_SESSION[‘google_data’]=$user; // Storing Google User Data in Session
header(“location: home.php”);
$_SESSION[‘token’] = $client->getAccessToken();
} else {
$authUrl = $client->createAuthUrl();
}

if(isset($personMarkup)):
print $personMarkup;
endif

if(isset($authUrl))
{
echo “<a href=”$authUrl”>Google Account Login</a>”;
} else {
echo “Logout“;
}
?>

home.php
Contains PHP code inserting Google plus session details into users table.

<?php
session_start();
include(‘db.php’); //Database Connection.
if (!isset($_SESSION[‘google_data’])) {
// Redirection to application home page.
header(“location: index.php”);
}
else
{
//echo print_r($userdata);
$userdata=$_SESSION[‘google_data’];
$email =$userdata[’email’];
$googleid =$userdata[‘id’];
$fullName =$userdata[‘name’];
$firstName=$userdata[‘given_name’];
$lastName=$userdata[‘family_name’];
$gplusURL=$userdata[‘link’];
$avatar=$userdata[‘picture’];
$gender=$userdata[‘gender’];
$dob=$userdata[‘birthday’];
//Execture query
$sql=mysql_query(“insert into users(email,fullname,firstname,lastname,google_id,gender,dob,profile_image,gpluslink) values(‘$email’,’$fullName’,’$firstName’,’$lastName’,’$googleid’,’$gender’,’$dob’,’$avatar’,’$gplusURL’)”);
?>

db.php
Database Configuration file.

<?php
$mysql_hostname = “localhost”;
$mysql_user = “username”;
$mysql_password = “password”;
$mysql_database = “databasename”;
$bd = mysql_connect($mysql_hostname, $mysql_user, $mysql_password) or die(“Could not connect database”);
mysql_select_db($mysql_database, $bd) or die(“Could not select database”);
?>

Related articles

• PHP OAuth API (phpclasses.org)
• basic_oauth 0.1.5 (pypi.python.org)
• How to store sensitive userdata in mysql using php (stackoverflow.com)

WP Google Drive Plugin

We are Released New wp google drive plugin to make back of your wordpress site files to google drive.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-google-drive/

Exclusive tutorial on How to Backup your WordPress blog to Google Drive. It is always recommended to backup your WordPress blog, which includes files (themes, plugins etc) and SQL tables (all your blog posts, comments, drafts etc are stored as tables in database).

Whenever your blog is gone (due to unsecured activities or some other reasons), these backups will help to get back your blog. In some cases, using 3rd party plugins and themes can also lead to malfunction of your blog, here also these backups helps to retain back your blog.

Reasons to Backup WordPress Blog to Google Drive

• Its a Google Product and is free to use up-to 5GB.
• Can get access to backups on any of the devices like Smartphones, Tablet PC’s, Laptops etc.
• Backups will be uploaded in quite less time (sometimes based on internet connection also).
• Highly Secure and reliable service, so there wont be any loss of data in the process.
• Backups can be shared with your blog partners (if have any) with a single click of mouse

How to Backup WordPress blog to Google Drive

Download and Install Google Drive for WordPress plugin from official WordPress plugin repository.

Google Drive for WordPress Plugin »

Here is the step-by-step guide that helps to backup your WordPress blog to Google Drive. Brief list of things you have to do in this tutorial:

1. Login to Google API and create a Client ID in it.
2. Authorizing the Plugin by using Client ID and Client Secret.
3. Setting up the plugin frequency to take backups.

• Follow this link Google APIs Console and login to your Google Account.

• Go to “API Access” tab and click on “Create an OAuth 2.0 client ID”

• Follow this link Google APIs Console and login to your Google Account.

• Go to “API Access” tab and click on “Create an OAuth 2.0 client ID”

• In the pop-up window, give a product name and upload logo before clicking on “Next” button.

• By default “Web Application” will be selected and don’t change it.

• In “Your site or hostname” section, click on “More Options” to expand link sections.

• Now, paste the link in the “Backup Settings” page here. Enter domain name in “JavaScripts” origin field.

• Click on “Create Client ID” and you have successfully created a Client ID using Google API Console.

• Copy the Client ID and Client Secret from API dashboard and paste them in “Backup Settings” page.

• You have to authorize the plugin by clicking on “Allow Access” button.

• Allow Access to the Plugin and the entire setup has been successfully installed.

Check Out : WordPress Plugin

How to automatically Backup WordPress blog to Google Drive

• Now, you can configure this plugin further by entering the custom folder ID of your Google Drive.
• Also define the maximum number of backups (use any positive integer in that field).
• Set the frequency of backup and everything will be automatically stored in your Google Drive.

Related articles

• 6 Tips For Hosting WordPress On Rackspace Cloud Sites (rackspace.com)
• 7 WP Plugins For My Content Curation Blog (contentcurationdesktop.com)
• How to Move WordPress Site to New Host: Zero Downtime (shoutmeloud.com)
• WordPress Plugins: The Best of the Best (boldlygoing.com)

Import Yahoo contact to website / download CSV

Written in PHP and using cURL, this script imports the names and email addresses from your yahoo account (yahoo id and password needed to login to yahoo from the script and retreive the address book).

<!–?php–>
ob_start();
session_start();
require ‘globals.php’;
require ‘oauth_helper.php’;
require ‘yahoo_function.php’;

// Callback can either be ‘oob’ or a url whose domain must match
// the domain that you entered when registering your application

$callback='<your call back URL>’;

if($_REQUEST[‘oauth_verifier’] != ”) {
$request_token = $_REQUEST[‘oauth_token’];
$oauth_verifier = $_REQUEST[‘oauth_verifier’];
$request_token_secret = $_SESSION[‘request_token_secret’];

$accessToken = get_access_token(OAUTH_CONSUMER_KEY, OAUTH_CONSUMER_SECRET,$request_token, $request_token_secret,$oauth_verifier, false, true, true);

$access_token = urldecode($accessToken[3][‘oauth_token’]);
$access_token_secret = urldecode($accessToken[3][‘oauth_token_secret’]);
$guid = $accessToken[3][‘xoauth_yahoo_guid’];

$callcont = callcontact(OAUTH_CONSUMER_KEY, OAUTH_CONSUMER_SECRET, $guid, $access_token, $access_token_secret, false, true);
print ‘Total Email COntact :’ .$callcont[‘contacts’][‘total’];
print ‘<br/><br/>’;

print ‘asda’.($callcont[‘contacts’][‘total’]);
for($i=0; $i<=$callcont[‘contacts’][‘total’];$i++) {
print ‘<br/><br/>’;
print $callcont[‘contacts’][‘contact’][$i][‘fields’][0][‘value’];
print ‘<br/><br/>’;
}

}else{

$retarr = get_request_token(OAUTH_CONSUMER_KEY, OAUTH_CONSUMER_SECRET,$callback, false, true, true);

if (! empty($retarr)){
$request_token = $retarr[3][‘oauth_token’];
$request_token_secret = $retarr[3][‘oauth_token_secret’];
$request_url = urldecode($retarr[3][‘xoauth_request_auth_url’]);
$_SESSION[‘request_token_secret’] = $request_token_secret;
header(“location:https://api.login.yahoo.com/oauth/v2/request_auth?oauth_token=&#8221;.$request_token);
}
exit(0);
}
?>

Yahoo_function.php

<?php

function get_request_token($consumer_key, $consumer_secret, $callback, $usePost=false, $useHmacSha1Sig=true, $passOAuthInHeader=false)
{
$retarr = array(); // return value
$response = array();

$url = ‘https://api.login.yahoo.com/oauth/v2/get_request_token&#8217;;
$params[‘oauth_version’] = ‘1.0’;
$params[‘oauth_nonce’] = mt_rand();
$params[‘oauth_timestamp’] = time();
$params[‘oauth_consumer_key’] = $consumer_key;
$params[‘oauth_callback’] = $callback;

// compute signature and add it to the params list
if ($useHmacSha1Sig) {
$params[‘oauth_signature_method’] = ‘HMAC-SHA1‘;
$params[‘oauth_signature’] =
oauth_compute_hmac_sig($usePost? ‘POST‘ : ‘GET’, $url, $params,
$consumer_secret, null);
} else {
$params[‘oauth_signature_method’] = ‘PLAINTEXT‘;
$params[‘oauth_signature’] =
oauth_compute_plaintext_sig($consumer_secret, null);
}

// Pass OAuth credentials in a separate header or in the query string
if ($passOAuthInHeader) {

$query_parameter_string = oauth_http_build_query($params, FALSE);

$header = build_oauth_header($params, “yahooapis.com”);
$headers[] = $header;
} else {
$query_parameter_string = oauth_http_build_query($params);
}

// POST or GET the request
if ($usePost) {
$request_url = $url;
logit(“getreqtok:INFO:request_url:$request_url”);
logit(“getreqtok:INFO:post_body:$query_parameter_string”);
$headers[] = ‘Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded‘;
$response = do_post($request_url, $query_parameter_string, 443, $headers);
} else {
$request_url = $url . ($query_parameter_string ?
(‘?’ . $query_parameter_string) : ” );

logit(“getreqtok:INFO:request_url:$request_url”);

$response = do_get($request_url, 443, $headers);

}

// extract successful response
if (! empty($response)) {
list($info, $header, $body) = $response;
$body_parsed = oauth_parse_str($body);
if (! empty($body_parsed)) {
logit(“getreqtok:INFO:response_body_parsed:”);

}
$retarr = $response;
$retarr[] = $body_parsed;
}

return $retarr;
}
function get_access_token($consumer_key, $consumer_secret, $request_token, $request_token_secret, $oauth_verifier, $usePost=false, $useHmacSha1Sig=true, $passOAuthInHeader=true)
{
$retarr = array(); // return value
$response = array();

$url = ‘https://api.login.yahoo.com/oauth/v2/get_token&#8217;;
$params[‘oauth_version’] = ‘1.0’;
$params[‘oauth_nonce’] = mt_rand();
$params[‘oauth_timestamp’] = time();
$params[‘oauth_consumer_key’] = $consumer_key;
$params[‘oauth_token’]= $request_token;
$params[‘oauth_verifier’] = $oauth_verifier;

// compute signature and add it to the params list
if ($useHmacSha1Sig) {
$params[‘oauth_signature_method’] = ‘HMAC-SHA1’;
$params[‘oauth_signature’] =
oauth_compute_hmac_sig($usePost? ‘POST’ : ‘GET’, $url, $params,
$consumer_secret, $request_token_secret);
} else {
$params[‘oauth_signature_method’] = ‘PLAINTEXT’;
$params[‘oauth_signature’] =
oauth_compute_plaintext_sig($consumer_secret, $request_token_secret);
}

// Pass OAuth credentials in a separate header or in the query string
if ($passOAuthInHeader) {
$query_parameter_string = oauth_http_build_query($params, false);
$header = build_oauth_header($params, “yahooapis.com”);
$headers[] = $header;
} else {
$query_parameter_string = oauth_http_build_query($params);
}

// POST or GET the request
if ($usePost) {
$request_url = $url;
logit(“getacctok:INFO:request_url:$request_url”);
logit(“getacctok:INFO:post_body:$query_parameter_string”);
$headers[] = ‘Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded’;
$response = do_post($request_url, $query_parameter_string, 443, $headers);
} else {
$request_url = $url . ($query_parameter_string ?
(‘?’ . $query_parameter_string) : ” );
logit(“getacctok:INFO:request_url:$request_url”);
$response = do_get($request_url, 443, $headers);
}

// extract successful response
if (! empty($response)) {
list($info, $header, $body) = $response;
$body_parsed = oauth_parse_str($body);
if (! empty($body_parsed)) {
logit(“getacctok:INFO:response_body_parsed:”);
//print_r($body_parsed);
}
$retarr = $response;
$retarr[] = $body_parsed;
}
return $retarr;
}
function callcontact($consumer_key, $consumer_secret, $guid, $access_token, $access_token_secret, $usePost=false, $passOAuthInHeader=true)
{
$retarr = array(); // return value
$response = array();

$url = ‘http://social.yahooapis.com/v1/user/&#8217; . $guid . ‘/contacts’;

$params[‘format’] = ‘json’;
$params[‘view’] = ‘compact’;
$params[‘oauth_version’] = ‘1.0’;
$params[‘oauth_nonce’] = mt_rand();
$params[‘oauth_timestamp’] = time();
$params[‘oauth_consumer_key’] = $consumer_key;
$params[‘oauth_token’] = $access_token;

// compute hmac-sha1 signature and add it to the params list
$params[‘oauth_signature_method’] = ‘HMAC-SHA1’;
$params[‘oauth_signature’] =
oauth_compute_hmac_sig($usePost? ‘POST’ : ‘GET’, $url, $params,
$consumer_secret, $access_token_secret);

// Pass OAuth credentials in a separate header or in the query string
if ($passOAuthInHeader) {
$query_parameter_string = oauth_http_build_query($params, true);
$header = build_oauth_header($params, “yahooapis.com”);
$headers[] = $header;
} else {
$query_parameter_string = oauth_http_build_query($params);
}

// POST or GET the request
if ($usePost) {
$request_url = $url;
logit(“callcontact:INFO:request_url:$request_url”);
logit(“callcontact:INFO:post_body:$query_parameter_string”);
$headers[] = ‘Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded’;
$response = do_post($request_url, $query_parameter_string, 80, $headers);
} else {
$request_url = $url . ($query_parameter_string ?
(‘?’ . $query_parameter_string) : ” );
logit(“callcontact:INFO:request_url:$request_url”);
$response = do_get($request_url, 80, $headers);
}

// extract successful response
if (! empty($response)) {
list($info, $header, $body) = $response;
if ($body) {
logit(“callcontact:INFO:response:”);

json_pretty_print($body);

}
$retarr = $response;
}
$contactsRes = json_decode($retarr[2],true);
return $contactsRes;
}
?>

Related articles

• Google OAuth for Installed Apps PHP Example (ioncannon.net)
• 2-legged OAuth with OAuth 1.0 and 2.0 (architects.dzone.com)
• Enterprise APIs and OAuth: Have it All (sys-con.com)
• Introduction to the Magento REST APIs with oAuth in Version 1.7 (aschroder.com)

Social Gestures and the Social Web – Part I

FROM the Below Article was Copied from the website http://blog.engag.io/2012/04/15/social-gestures-and-the-social-web-part-i/

The Original Author – MR.  William Mougayar

Social Gesturing is at the heart of the social web. Those little signals have a small footprint but a large impact.

The crowd-sourced nature of social gestures adds up to a lot of value. After all, Facebook with all its might was mostly based and founded on 3 basic social gestures: liking, sharing and linking, each taking a fraction of a second to accomplish.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the hierarchy of social gestures in terms of value and potential.  And I came-up with the following way to organize them into a taxonomy where certain gestures are grouped with each other according to the objective they are meant to achieve and the purpose they target: People, Interests or Content.

The graph below is self-explanatory. The objective of social gesturing is to a) grab Attention, b) Express yourself, c) Curate interests (or content), d) develop Relationships, or e) Engage with people.

The most commonly used Social Gestures are Sharing, Linking and Liking when it comes to Content, and Following or Friending when it comes to People. But the area that holds the most promise is Engagement with People.

There is an ascending amount of time it takes to accomplish each gesture. If you look at the two extremes, Discussing something with someone is a lot more time-consuming than Clicking on content or Sharing it.

Personally, and for Engagio, I’m very interested in the gestures around Social Engagement. I think we’re just getting started in that segment, and I plan to cover more on that topic in Part II of this post.

In the meantime, what is your opinion on the following 3 questions:

• Are there other Social Gestures that you are seeing?

• Do you see new ones that are emerging?

• Which ones do you use the most?

Related articles

• Engagio: A Canadian Startup Story and the future of the Social Web (startupnorth.ca)
• Engagio wants to be your one-stop social inbox (gigaom.com)
• How to swear in Italian (afrahm.wordpress.com)
• Don’t Export Your American Hand Gestures [Infographic] (communicationstudies.com)
• ShadowPuppets prototype lets you pinch-to-zoom, click, and scroll with shadow gestures (theverge.com)

Engagio: Recognize & Build Relationships On Social Network Easily

Engagio helps you to track your online conversations and allows you to develop meaningful relationships from them. In short, it is your tool to find quality relationships.

Pitched as ‘Your inbox for online conversations and relationships’, it is a tool much like Gmail, but is for managing your conversations in social networking sites and commenting systems. Engagio gives you visibility about the people behind these conversations and reveals their social identities profile. It saves you much time and allows you to connect with others in a much better and deeper way.

Although social media has many advantages, sometimes we fall short of managing our many relationships on social networking sites. With so many friends, family members, colleagues, classmates and relatives in our contacts list, we miss out on building quality relationships with people who matter. Engagio helps you to do that and more.

Engagio believes that commenting and conversations are strong social signals. They are stronger than likes, shares and links. Comments are implicit linkages about people. After all, you only care to comment on somebody’s post and take time to do it when you like that person or what s/he has to say. Like is easy, commenting takes time and thought. Engagio studies all that and more, and give you full visibility into the potential relationships behind your comments and conversations.

The service is frictionless and derives implicit data from your normal, everyday interactions. It does not matter whether your conversations are on social networks or inside your Engagio inbox, Engagio tracks them all. You connect to your social networks and Engagio starts to track, record, analyze and report on your interaction activity.

All you need to do is to signup from the entry page or jump to your inbox. You can easily track your conversations on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, Disqus-enabled sites, Hacker news comments, Foursquare and more. This is a wonderful service for everybody who wishes to build up on great relationships without putting in much time and effort.

Chat With Command Prompt

If you want personal chat with a friend

you don’t need to download any yahoo messenger
All you need is your friends IP address and Command Prompt.

Firstly, open Notepad and enter:

@echo off

:A

Cls

echo MESSENGER

set /p n=User:

set /p m=Message:

net send %n% %m%

Pause

Goto A

Now save this as “Messenger.bat”. Open the .bat file and in Command

Prompt you should see:

MESSENGER

User:

After “User” type the IP address of the computer you want to contact.

After this, you should see this:

Message:

Now type in the message you wish to send.Before you press “Enter” it should look like this:

MESSENGER

User:27.192.168.1.88

Message: Hello SoftIT!

Now all you need to do is press “Enter”, and start chatting!

Mobile Trading

The Procyon Holdings (PROHD) name is expanding again as we push out into another development area — the Android framework. When I abandoned my BlackBerry, the choice to move to the Android platform was an easy decision. Market saturation, the development community, and fluidity between devices make this platform shine.

I’ve been having a few end user problems with the current iteration of our trading website. First, the native Android Gingerbread browser lacks SVG support, an issue that has bewildered me since I read about it. I can solve this issue by using another browser such as Opera, but I would like to use the native one.

Also working with a HTML + Ajax website on a device with a touch interface feels like you are not getting the full user experience. I want to scroll down lists with my finder, click and hold to expose options, and speed around menus.

Mobile Architecture

We had to expand our design and create a few new pieces to get data to the mobile world. New items include the creation of a daemon to simply database population, exposing data via XML, and working with an existing library to enable Push notifications.

Information Flow

The Daemon runs on our server, periodically pulls transactions from the Eve API, and places that information in our wallet table.

Our previous design was that you would have to hit the transactions webpage and it would trigger an update. Getting a page to refresh on a desktop connected via broadband versus a mobile phone is quite the different experience.

Android has a framework called C2DM(Android Cloud to Device Messaging) which enables you to send lightweight push notifications to devices.

Our vision is that when a sell order clears, a large/special sale has occurred, or a significant milestone has been reached, we send a notice. This will be visible on phone’s Status Notification Bar and cause me to act if deemed important. I have been forgetting to buy or trade a particular item after the sell orders have cleared. Forget things — loose profit.

Getting data out of our database required the creation of a webservice to produce XML output from our wallet table.

Here is an example of the sale of one item in our XML feed:

<?xml version="1.0"?>  
<TransactionList>  
<Transaction>  
<transactionDateTime>2012-04-19 06:21:04</transactionDateTime>  
<typeID>21096</typeID>  
<typeName>Cynosural Field Generator I</typeName>  
<quantity>1</quantity>  
<price>1948939.91</price>  
<profit>147803</profit>  
<stationName>STATION</stationName>  
<icon>21096_32.png</icon>  
</Transaction>  
</TransactionList>

Alpha Screenshot

This screenshot is our first proof of concept. We’re able to get information from an XML feed, display it, and get/cache images from the Eve image server. Major credit goes to my trading and corporation partner James, who has been doing the development work and educating me on the Android framework.

There is a lot we want to do with the mobile version. Menus, tabs, charts, reports, and the ability to add items to a shopping cart/wish list are all things on the drawing board.

Future Collaboration

This project is our first exposure to the Android framework and after the initial learning curve, we might perhaps coolabrate with the Aideron Robotics team on Aura. So maybe some of our trading mechanics will make their way into the Aura application.

Getting the Distance between Locations using Google Maps API

Modifying my post on drawing directions in a MapView using Google's API, I have come up with a solution to get the distance between two locations. Considering the same example I modified getDirections() to the method given below which returns distance as a string in kms(or meters).

public String getDistance(double lat1, double lon1, double lat2, double lon2) {
	String result_in_kms = "";
	String url = "http://maps.google.com/maps/api/directions/xml?origin=" + lat1 + "," + lon1 + "&destination=" + lat2 + "," + lon2 + "&sensor=false&units=metric";
	String tag[] = {"text"};
	HttpResponse response = null;
	try {
		HttpClient httpClient = new DefaultHttpClient();
		HttpContext localContext = new BasicHttpContext();
		HttpPost httpPost = new HttpPost(url);
		response = httpClient.execute(httpPost, localContext);
		InputStream is = response.getEntity().getContent();
		DocumentBuilder builder = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance().newDocumentBuilder();
		Document doc = builder.parse(is);
		if (doc != null) {
			NodeList nl;
			ArrayList args = new ArrayList();
			for (String s : tag) {
				nl = doc.getElementsByTagName(s);
				if (nl.getLength() > 0) {
					Node node = nl.item(nl.getLength() - 1);
					args.add(node.getTextContent());
				} else {
					args.add(" - ");
				}
			}
			result_in_kms = String.format("%s", args.get(0));
		}
	} catch (Exception e) {
		e.printStackTrace();
	}
	return result_in_kms;
}

How to get more page views for your blog

“What makes a blog popular? What drives page views?” These are the questions that we’ve been trying to answer over the last few weeks. We were on a mission to dig into the data and analyze the strongest parameters that influence the flow of visitors to WordPress.com blogs.

Out of the 30+ million blogs on WordPress.com, we randomly selected a sample of almost 100,000 blogs to perform a regression analysis. Here are our findings, together with a few recommendations. We hope that this provides some new information, and kudos to you in case you’ve already incorporated these tips into your blog – the data suggests that you’re on the right track. Keep it up!

Make your blog easy to follow – It almost sounds obvious, but the simplest way to build more awareness is to make it easier to do so. Make sure that you have the follow widget as visible as possible. If your readers receive a notification every time you post, or see your post in their reader, there is a much higher chance that they will revisit your blog.

Comments, Comments, Comments – The most successful blogs, we found, created and encouraged a dialogue with their readers. The best way to make people more engaged with your writing is for you to engage back and start a conversation. In your posts, encourage people to comment. Also, make sure that you reply to people’s comments and continue the dialogue. This back and forth conversation is a significant driver of page views; holding all else equal, every additional comment can potentially drive up to 18 incremental page views! You can start by simply asking follow-up questions at the end of each post: ”have you ever done X?”; “do you think Y is acceptable?”. You can read some more thoughts on how to build your audience  and how to get more comments.

Post Frequently and Regularly – Your readers want to know that you are there for them and that you are “on it”. If you post frequently and regularly and have enabled the follow feature as we mentioned above, checking your blog could become a daily routine for your readers. Even if it’s a short post, write something new as frequently as possible, and at regular intervals. (The Daily Post can help with ideas, as can the advice on how to get more traffic)

While these three tips were shown to be the most important drivers of page views in our analysis, you might consider other parameters, which we found as having a partially significant effect: syndicating your post to Twitter and Facebook (using Publicize), for example, could lead to additional page views.

Happy blogging!

Google to bring cheap Android tablets

The internet giant is reportedly set to launch a sub-Rs 10,000 tablet later this year.

Google has said that it will focus more on lower end tablets.

“There’s been a lot of success on some lower-priced tablets that run Android, maybe not the full Google version of Android, but we definitely believe that there is going to be a lot of success at the lower end of the market. It’s definitely an area we think is important and we’re quite focused on,” Larry Page, Google’s chief executive officer, was reported as saying.

Currently, there are a lot of cheap Android tablets in the market but these are mostly from lesser known manufacturers.

Google’s direct involvement in low cost Android tablets could be revolutionary. In fact, the online giant is reportedly set to launch a sub $200 (Rs 10,000) device this year itself. The tablet is said to have a 7 inch display with Android 4.0 operating system, a quad core processor, and WiFi for internet access.

Social Media Integration

Spotify & Social Media

Spotify music applications offer easy integration with a large variety of different, popular social media channels. With their user-friendly applications, integrating your music lifestyle into your previously established social media channels is fairly simple. Such social media channels that your Spotify application can integrate with are Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr. As of this year, Spotify was completely redesigned in order to fully and completely integrate into both Facebook and Twitter accounts. The new application also has fully functioning/interactive applications, embedded into its database structure, such as last.fm, billboard.com, and Sounddrop.

Some of the key features of this fully-integrated platform offer sharing and tracking functions with your automatically-synchronized social media friends. Such functions include tracking what your friends are listening to, discovering  what sort of music and playlists are “trending”, as well as even  collaborating on shared playlists with other friends or users. These social media integration features have become such a vital part of this new social experience (i.e. Spotify) that new users are required to have a Facebook or Twitter account in order to complete registration of the service.

Last but not least, this marriage between Spotify and Facebook has also brought upon a little reverse-integration to the pairing. This reverse-integration comes from the recent addition and invention of a fully-functioning Spotify music application embedded on the Facebook website server.

Explore the REST API

I have had the pleasure of working with the WordPress.com REST API over the past few weeks and am very excited to start “dogfooding” this resource everywhere I can.

One cool feature is that all the endpoints are self-documenting. In fact, the documentation for the REST API is built by the API itself! With this information we were able to build a console to help debug and explore the various resources that are now available through the new API. So let me introduce you to the new REST console for WordPress.com.

A word of caution: the console is only available when you are logged into WordPress.com and is hooked up to the live system, so be careful with your POST requests!

At its simplest you can supply the method, path, query, and body for the resource you wish to examine (it’s pre-populated with /me). Press “Submit” to see the response status for your request and an expandable JSON object that you can explore. All links listed under meta are active, so click one to make another request.

To get a better idea of what kind of parameters a request can take, select it under the “Reference” section. It will then provide an interface with some contextual help to let you know which path, query, and body parameters it accepts, what each of those parameters are for, and a field for you to provide the value.

Related articles

• Explore the REST API (developer.wordpress.com)
• How to analyze your Blog Traffic using WordPress Stats API (selvabalaji.wordpress.com)
• Apigee v2 Console: Making learning APIs as simple as possible, but not simpler (apigee.com)
• Phasing out old API, upgrade your WordPress plugins! (flattr.net)
• REST easy with JIRA 5 (blogs.atlassian.com)

How to analyze your Blog Traffic using WordPress Stats API

Analyzing my blog traffic is one of my favorite past times. Seeing traffic surge and strangers using my posts gives me gratification. Initially, my analysis was fairly low tech – checking WordPress stats page periodically. After doing it a few times, I realized I could do more methodically – and I can use the statistics to do some rudimentary data mining.

As you know, I have a WordPress.com blog. WordPress exposes the statistics in two ways : As a flash chart in the dashboard and as API service.
Viewing Blog Stats – Low Tech Way

If you want to take a look at your blog’s stats today , then you can do it in the dashboard. Assuming you are logged into your WordPress login, go to your blog. You will see WordPress toolbar at the top of the page. Click “My Dashboard“. It will show a chart of total daily visits for the past 15 days. If you want more details, hover your mouse over “My Account” and select “Stats”.

This page shows a wealth of information about your blog but it is limited to 2 days – today and yesterday. There are atleast 6 important statistics in that page.
WordPress Stats Sections

a) Views Per Day
This is probably the statistic you are most interested in. This plots the total number of visits each day for the last 30 days. This also has multiple tabs which allows you to aggregate the statistics information. For example you can view the total weekly and monthly visits . This gives a basic view about how your blog is faring.

b) Referrers
Referrers are basically web pages from which visitors reached your blog. There are different types of referrers : pingbacks, related posts, explicit linking etc. If a certain website is driving lot of visitors to your blog , it is time to notice ! Referrers allows you to get that insight. This panel shows the top 10 referrers. You can click on the “Referrers” link to get the full listing.

c) Top Posts and Pages
This shows the top 10 posts for the given day. One interesting thing is that they track home page separately. Also if you have different pages (eg About), then visits to these pages are also tracked. Again, if you want to see the number of visits to each page, you can click on the title link.

One interesting thing is that each of the posts/pages in this section also has an addition chart icon near them. Clicking on them gives the stats for that particular post alone. The new page shows a chart detailing how many visits occurred to that page in the last few weeks. Most interestingly , they also show the average visits per day for the last few weeks and months. This gives a glimpse into the lasting popularity of your post.

d) Search Engine Terms
I am not very clear what this exactly means – The instruction says “These are terms people used to find your blog.” . I am not sure if this corresponds to search terms typed in search engines or in WordPress search boxes etc . Anyway, this panel gives information about the search terms that fetch visits to your blog.

e) Clicks
Clicks panel shows the list of links in your blog that your visitors clicked. In a way , you can consider it as an inverse of referrers. In this case, you act as a referrer for some other blog. This post gives some hints about the type of visitors to your blog.

f) Aggregate Statistics
There is also another panel that shows some aggregate stats. This shows the total number of views to your blog so far , number of blogs and posts , email subscribers etc.
A Better Way

Using WordPress Stats page to get your data is fairly low tech. This gives some data which can only give you an instinct of how things go. But it will not give you any deeper insights. For doing more data mining, you need data – lots of data. Fortunately, WordPress makes available a stats API which you can query to get regular data. In the rest of the post , we will talk about the API and how to use the data that you get out of it.
Using WordPress Stats API

The primary url which provides the stats is http://stats.wordpress.com/csv.php . You can click on it to see the required parameters. There are 4 important parameters to this API.

a) api_key : api_key is a mandatory parameter and ensures that only owner queries the website. There are three ways to get this information. This key is emailed to you at the time you created your blog. Or you can access it at My Dashboard -> Users -> Personal Settings. This will show your api key. For the truly lazy click this url .

b) blog_id : This is a number which uniquely identifies your blog. Either blog_id or blog_uri is mandatory. I generally prefer blog_id. Finding blog_id is a bit tricky. Go to the blog stats page (My Account -> Stats). Click on the title link of “Top Posts and Pages”. This will open a new page which shows the statistics for last 7 days. If you look at the page’s url, it will have a parameter called blog. The value of this parameter is the blog_id . Atleast for my blog , it is a 8 digit number.

c) blog_uri : If you do not want to take all the trouble of getting blog_id , use blog_uri. This is nothing but the url of your blog (http://blah.wordpress.com).

d) table : This field identifies the exact statistic you want. One of views, postviews, referrers, searchterms, clicks. Each of these correspond to the sections of WordPress stats discussed above. If table is not specified , views is selected as the default table.

You can get more details from the stats API page given above.
Sample Python Scripts to fetch WordPress Stats

I have written a few scripts which fetch each of the WordPress stats. One of them run every hour and gets the total number of views so far for the whole blog. The other scripts runs once a day and fetch the total clicks, search terms, referrer and top posts for that day. All of these store the data as a csv file which lends itself to analysis.

If you are interested in the scripts , the links to them are :

1. getBlogDaysStats.py : Fetches the total views for the whole blog at the current time. For best results run every hour.
2. getBlogReferrers.py : Fetches all the referrers to your blog.
3. getBlogPostViews.py : Fetches the number of views for individual blog posts and pages.
4. getBlogSearchTerms.py : Fetches all the search terms used to find your blog today.
5. getBlogClicks.py : Fetches the urls that people who visited your blog clicked.
How to Collect WordPress Statistics

The first step is of course to collect data periodically. I use cron to run the scripts. My crontab file looks like this :

11 * * * * /usr/bin/python scriptpath/getBlogDaysStats.py
12 0 * * * /usr/bin/python scriptpath/getBlogClicks.py
14 0 * * * /usr/bin/python scriptpath/getBlogPostViews.py
15 0 * * * /usr/bin/python scriptpath/getBlogReferrers.py
16 0 * * * /usr/bin/python scriptpath/getBlogSearchTerms.py

Basically, I run the getBlogDaysStats every hour and other scripts every day. I also run the rest of scripts at early morning so that it fetches the previous day’s data.
How to Use WordPress Statistics

If you run the scripts for few days, you will have lot of data. The amount of analysis you can make is limited only by your creativity. In this section, I will tell some of the ways I use the stats instead of giving an explicit how-to.

1. Views per day : It is collected by getBlogDaysStats.py. The most basic stuff is to chart them. This will give a glimpse of your trend – If it is static or climbing, then good news. If it is falling down it is something to worry about. I must also mention that have a more or less a plateau in your chart happens often. For eg in my blog, the charts follow a pattern – It increases for quite some time , then stays at the same level for a long time and then increases again. Also , worrying about individual day’s statistics is not a good idea. Try to aggregate them into weekly and monthly values as they give a less noisy view of your blog traffic.

Another common thing to do is to analyze per hour traffic. This can be easily derived from the output of the script. Basically, if m is the number of views at time a and n is the number of views at time b , then you received n-m views in b-a hours. I usually calculate it for every hour. This gives a *basic* idea of peak time for your blog – You can also infer your primary audience , although the interpretation is ambiguous. As an example , I get most of my traffic at night – especially between 1 AM – 9 AM. Morning time traffic is pretty weak and it picks up again in the evening. Interpreting this is hard as my blog covers a lot of topics – but if your blog is more focused you learn a lot about your visitors.

2. Referrers : This is a very useful statistic if you do some marketing for your blog. For best results, you may want to use just the domain of the url instead of the whole url for analysis. Using it you can figure out which sites drive traffic to your blog. If it is another blog, then it is a good idea to cultivate some friendship with that blog’s owner. For eg, for my blog , I found that digg drives more traffic that reddit. Also facebook drives some traffic to my blog – so I use WordPress’s facebook publicize feature. I also find that I get some traffic due to WordPress’s related posts feature which means that I must use good use of categories and tags. Your mileage may vary but I hope the basic idea is clear.

3. Individual Post Views : This is probably the most useful set of statistics. Basically , it allows you to analyze the traffic of individual posts over a period of time. I have a file which associates a blog post with extra information : For eg it stores the categories, tags, original creation date, all modification dates etc. (If you are curious , I store the information in JSON format). Once you have this information lot of analysis is possible.

a. You can figure out your audience type. If for a post, you have lot of audience in the first week and almost no audience from then on – then most likely your audience is driven by subscription. If it keeps having a regular traffic, then probably it has some useful stuff and traffic is constantly driven to it by search engines. For eg, my Biweekly links belong to the first scenario : When I publish one, lot of people visit it and then after a few days it gets practically no visits. In the other case, my post of Mean Shift gets a steady stream of views every week. If you want to sustain a good viewership, you may want to write more posts which can attract long term views.

b. If you use categories and tags wisely, you can tally the number of views per each category. This will give you an idea of the blog posts which users prefer. I noticed that my audience seems to like my Linux / Data Mining posts than other categories. So it is a good idea to write more of those posts.

c. You can kind of see a pareto effect in your blog posts. For eg, my top 10 blogs account for atleast 70% of my blog traffic. So if I could identify them correctly, I can write lesser posts but still maintain my blog traffic 😉

You can do lot more than these simple analysis but this is just a start.

4. Search Terms : This is another neat statistic. You can use it to figure out the primary way in which users access your blog. For eg, the ratio of total blog post view for a day and number of search terms for the day is quite interesting. If the ratio is high, then most of the people find your blog using search engines. In a way , this a potential transient audience whom you can convert to regular audience. If the ratio is small , then your blog gets views by referrers and regular viewers. This will assure you a steady audience , but it is slightly hard to get new people “find” your blog.

This statistic also tells you which keywords the viewers use to find my blog. You can gleam lot of interesting things from this. For eg, almost all of my search terms are 3-5 words long and usually very specific. This either means that the user is an expert and has crafted specific query. It may also mean that user rewrote the query and my blog was not found in the general query. I also use the terms to figure out if the user would have been satisfied with my blog. For eg, I know that a user searching “install matlab to 64-bit” will be satisfied while some one who searches “k means determine k” will not be. You can do either of two things : augment your blog post to add information that users are searching , or point users to resources that satisfies their query. For eg, I found lot of people reached my blog searching for how to find k. I found geomblog had couple of good posts on it and updated my blog to link to these posts. Some times, I may add a FAQ if same search query comes multiple times and if my page contains the information but is obscure. Eg : lot of people reached my blog searching for Empathy’s chat log location. My post of Empathy had it but not in a prominent fashion. So I added a FAQ which points the answer immediately.

5. Clicks : This statistic is tangentially useful in finding out which links the user clicks. One way I use it is to gauge the “tech” level of my reader who visits my blog using search engines. I usually link to Wikipedia articles for common terms. If the user clicks on these basic terms often ,then it might mean that I write articles at a level higher that the typical user and I have to explain it better. For eg , in my post of K-Means , this was the reason I explain supervised and unsupervised learning at the start even though most people learning k-means already know it.
Other Resources for Blog Traffic

There are other locations that give some useful information about your traffic. Some of them are :

a. Google Web Master Site : This is arguably one of the most comprehensive information about your blog post’s performance in Google. You can see it a Google Webmaster Page -> Your site on web -> Search queries. It has information like impressions, click throughs, average position etc. You can download all of them in a csv file too ! Literally a gold mine for data lovers.
b. Feedburner : Even though, WordPress has a feed, I switched to FeedBurner. One of the main reason was that it gave me a csv file detailing the number of views by my subscribers.
c. Quantcast : Useful for aggregate information. It has multiple charts that detail the number of views, unique visitors etc. The Quantcast data might not be accurate as it is usually estimated – but it gives a broad gauge of your blog. It also has some statistic which says how many of your visitors are addicts , how many are pass throughs etc. Quite useful !
d. Alexa : Similar to Quantcast . I primarily use my Alexa Rank for motivation to improve my blog ranking.
Pivot Tables

I primarily use Python prompt to play with data. If you are not comfortable with programmatic tweaking, use spreadsheets to do these analysis. If you have Windows, you can do lot of powerful analysis by importing the statistics obtained by the scripts into Microsoft Excel. Excel has a neat feature called Pivot tables. It is also an advanced topic that I will not discuss here. You can do some fantastic analysis using pivots. They also give you the ability to view the same data from multiple perspectives.

In this post, I have barely scratched the surface – You can do lot of amazing analysis using WordPress Stats API . I will talk about more complex analysis in a later post. Have fun with the data !

Related articles

• WordPress Stats and Numbers: Breaking Their Own Records (lorelle.wordpress.com)
• Blog Referrers: DesignSponge vs. WordPress (projectpalermo.com)
• To Use WordPress or Blogger… That is the Question (wisdomofjen.wordpress.com)
• WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org (bradyszabo.com)

Mobypicture Photo post with API method php

Image via CrunchBase

include(/*‘api.php’);
$mp = new Mobypicture;
$result = $mp->postMediaUrl(‘imagename,’username‘, ‘password‘);
$result = $mp->postMedia();
print_r($result);

 

====================================================
API .php
===============================================================
<?php

/**
* A Mobypicture API class
*
* @author Andreas Creten/madewithlove
* @version 1
**/
class Mobypicture {
/**
* The MobyPicture API key
**/
static $api_key = ‘zkFcHG1hpSqL4Xb2’;

/**
* The MobyPicture API Location
**/
static $api_location = ‘https://api.mobypicture.com/&#8217;;

/**
* Upload media to MobyPicture
*
* @param string $image The image to be uploaded
* @param string $username The username of the uploader
* @param string $password The p
* @param string $description
* @param array $tags  Tags for the image
* @param string $location
* @param array $hashtags
* @param array $services
* @return mixed
* @author Andreas Creten
**/
public function postMedia($image, $username, $password, $title = null, $description = null, $tags = array(), $location = null, $hashtags = array(), $services = array()) {
// Call the postMedia method on thw MobyPicture API
$response = $this->api_call(‘postMedia’, array(
‘i’ => $image,
‘u’ => $username,
‘p’ => $password,
‘t’ => $title,
‘d’ => $description,
‘tags’ => implode(‘,’, $tags),
‘latlong’ => $location,
‘ht’=> implode(‘,’, $hashtags),
‘s’ => implode(‘,’, $services)
));

// Parse the response of the MobyPicture API
if($response->result) {
print_r();
if(isset($response->result[‘code’]) && $response->result[‘code’] == 0) {
return $response;
}
else {
// This needs more detailed error messages
return false;
}
}
}

/**
* Upload media to MobyPicture
*
* @param string $image The image to be uploaded
* @param string $username The username of the uploader
* @param string $password The password of the uploader
* @param array $tags Tags for the image
* @return mixed
* @author Andreas Creten
**/
public function postMediaUrl($image, $username, $password) {

// Call the postMedia method on thw MobyPicture API
$response = $this->api_call(‘postMediaUrl’, array(
‘i’ => $image,
‘u’ => $username,
‘p’ => $password
//’tags’ => implode(‘,’, $tags)
));

print_r($tags);
exit;
// Parse the response of the MobyPicture API
if($response->result) {

if(isset($response->result[‘code’]) && $response->result[‘code’] == 0) {
return $response;
}
else {
// This needs more detailed error messages
return false;
}
}
}

/**
* Get the thumbnail url for an image on MobyPicture
*
* @param string $tinyurl The tinyurl or tinyurl code for of picture
* @param string $size The size of the needed thumbnail (thumbnail, small or medium)
* @return mixed
* @author Andreas Creten
* @todo
**/
public function getThumb($tinyurl, $size = ‘thumbnail’) {
// Try to remove the crap out of the tiny url
$tinyurl_code = $this->tinyurl_to_tinyurl_code($tinyurl);

// Call the getThumbUrl method on thw MobyPicture API
$response = $this->api_call(‘getThumbUrl’, array(
‘t’ => $tinyurl,
‘s’ => $size
));

// Parse the response of the MobyPicture API
if($response->result) {
if(isset($response->result[‘code’]) && $response->result[‘code’] == 0) {
return $response;
}
else {
// This needs more detailed error messages
return false;
}
}
}

/**
* Get the thumbnail url for an image on MobyPicture
*
* @param string $tinyurl The tinyurl or tinyurl code for of picture
* @param string $size The size of the needed thumbnail (thumbnail, small or medium)
* @return mixed
* @author Andreas Creten
**/
public function getThumbUrl($tinyurl, $size = ‘thumbnail’) {
// Try to remove the crap out of the tiny url
$tinyurl_code = $this->tinyurl_to_tinyurl_code($tinyurl);

// Call the getThumbUrl method on thw MobyPicture API
$response = $this->api_call(‘getThumbUrl’, array(
‘t’ => $tinyurl,
‘s’ => $size
));

// Parse the response of the MobyPicture API
if($response->result) {
if(isset($response->result[‘code’]) && $response->result[‘code’] == 0) {
return $response;
}
else {
// This needs more detailed error messages
return false;
}
}
}

/**
* Get the info of an image on MobyPicture
*
* @param string $tinyurl The tinyurl or tinyurl code for of picture
* @return mixed
* @author Andreas Creten
**/
public function getMediaInfo($tinyurl) {
// Try to remove the crap out of the tiny url
$tinyurl_code = $this->tinyurl_to_tinyurl_code($tinyurl);

// Call the getThumbUrl method on thw MobyPicture API
$response = $this->api_call(‘getMediaInfo’, array(
‘t’ => $tinyurl
));

// Parse the response of the MobyPicture API
if($response->result) {
if(isset($response->result[‘code’]) && $response->result[‘code’] == 0) {
return $response;
}
else {
// This needs more detailed error messages
return false;
}
}
}

/**
* Check an account on MobyPicture
*
* @param string $username
* @param string $pin The password of the user
* @return mixed
* @author Andreas Creten
**/
public function checkCredentials($username, $pin) {
// Call the createUser method on the MobyPicture API
$response = $this->api_call(‘checkCredentials’, array(
‘u’ => $username,
‘p’ => $pin
));

// Parse the response of the MobyPicture API
if($response->result) {
//log_r($response);
if(isset($response->result[‘code’]) && $response->result[‘code’] == 0) {
return true;
}
else {

return $response;
}
}
}

/**
* Post a comment on MobyPicture
*
* @param string $username Username (can be a Twitter username)
* @param string $pin PIN or password
* @param string $name Name (not used in case an username has been supplied)
* @param string $email Email (not used in case an username has been supplied)
* @param string $tinyurl The tinyurl or tinyurl code for of picture
* @param string $message
* @param string $tweet Tweets this comment on Twitter if possible with the supplied credentials
* @return mixed
* @author Andreas Creten
**/
public function postComment($username, $pin, $name, $email, $tinyurl, $message, $tweet = 0) {
// Try to remove the crap out of the tiny url
$tinyurl_code = $this->tinyurl_to_tinyurl_code($tinyurl);

// Call the createUser method on thw MobyPicture API
$response = $this->api_call(‘postComment’, array(
‘u’ => $username,
‘p’ => $pin,
‘name’ => $name,
’email’ => $email,
‘tinyurl_code’ => $tinyurl_code,
‘message’ => $message,
‘tweet’ => $tweet
));

// Parse the response of the MobyPicture API
if($response->result) {
//log_r($response);
if(isset($response->result[‘code’]) && $response->result[‘code’] == 0) {
return true;
}
else {

return $response;
}
}
}

/**
* Create a new account on MobyPicture
*
* @param string $tinyurl The tinyurl or tinyurl code for of picture
* @return mixed
* @author Andreas Creten
**/
public function getComments($tinyurl) {
// Try to remove the crap out of the tiny url
$tinyurl_code = $this->tinyurl_to_tinyurl_code($tinyurl);

// Call the createUser method on thw MobyPicture API
$response = $this->api_call(‘getComments’, array(
‘tinyurl_code’ => $tinyurl_code
));

// Parse the response of the MobyPicture API
if($response->result) {
//log_r($response);
if(isset($response->result[‘code’]) && $response->result[‘code’] == 0) {
return true;
}
else {

return $response;
}
}
}

/**
* Create a new account on MobyPicture
*
* @param string $username
* @param string $pin The password for the new user
* @param string $email
* @param string $firstname
* @param string $lastname
* @param string $country
* @param string $keepposted
* @param string $agreeterms
* @return mixed
* @author Andreas Creten
**/
public function createUser($username, $pin, $email, $firstname, $lastname, $country, $keepposted, $agreeterms) {
// Call the createUser method on thw MobyPicture API
$response = $this->api_call(‘createUser’, array(
‘username’ => $username,
‘pin’ => $pin,
’email’ => $email,
‘firstname’ => $firstname,
‘lastname’ => $lastname,
‘countryid’ => $country,
‘keepposted’ => $keepposted,
‘agreeterms’ => $agreeterms
));

// Parse the response of the MobyPicture API
if($response->result) {
//log_r($response);
if(isset($response->result[‘code’]) && $response->result[‘code’] == 0) {
return true;
}
else {

return $response;
}
}
}

/**
* Search posts on MobyPicture
*
* @param string $terms Specifies for which words to search
* @param string $items_per_page Amount of posts to show on each page (default: 10)
* @param string $current_page The current page (default: 1)
* @param string $fields  Specifies in what fields to search (‘title’, ‘description’ or ‘both’, default: both)
* @param array $tags Look for one or more tags
* @param string $username Only return postings from the specified username
* @param string $sort_by Sort the results based on this field
* @param string $order Specifies in which direction sorting should be done
* @param string $country Only return postings from the specified country (ISO3166 code2)
* @param string $city Only return postings from the specified city
* @return mixed
* @author Andreas Creten
**/
public function searchPosts($terms, $items_per_page = 10, $current_page = 1, $fields = ‘both’, $tags = array(), $username = null, $sort_by = null, $order = null, $country = null, $city = null) {
// Call the createUser method on thw MobyPicture API
$response = $this->api_call(‘searchPosts’, array(
‘searchTerms’ => $terms,
‘searchItemsPerPage’ => $items_per_page,
‘searchPage’ => $current_page,
‘searchIn’ => $fields,
‘searchUsername’ => $lastname,
‘searchTags’ => implode(‘,’, $tags),
‘searchSortBy’ => $sort_by,
‘searchOrder’ => $order,
‘searchGeoCity’ => $city,
‘searchGeoCountry’ => $country
));

// Parse the response of the MobyPicture API
if($response->result) {
//log_r($response);
if(isset($response->result[‘code’]) && $response->result[‘code’] == 0) {
return true;
}
else {

return $response;
}
}
}

/**
* Do a call to the MobyPicture API
*
* @param string $method The method to be called
* @param array $arguments The arguments for this call
* @return SimpleXMLObject The MobyPicture response
* @author Andreas Creten
**/
private function api_call($method, $arguments) {

// Check which type of method it is (postMedia requers another type of handling)
if($method == ‘postMedia’) {
// Initialize the curl session
$ch = curl_init();

// Set the target url
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, self::$api_location);

// Enable post
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);

// Enable return transfer
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);

// Create the arguments array
$arguments = array_merge($arguments, array(
‘k’      => self::$api_key,
‘action’ => $method,
‘format’ => ‘xml’
));

// Load the image file
$arguments[‘i’] = ‘@’.$arguments[‘i’] ;

// Add the arguments to curl
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $arguments);

// Execute the curl request
$result = curl_exec($ch);

// Close curl
curl_close($ch);

print_r($result);

// Return the response as an SimpleXML object
return simplexml_load_string($result);
}
else {
// Compose the target URL
$url = sprintf(self::$api_location.’?action=%s&k=%s&format=xml&%s’, $method, self::$api_key, http_build_query($arguments));

// Return the response as an SimpleXML object
return simplexml_load_file($url);
}
}

/**
* Transform a Mobypicture tinyurl into a tinyurl_code
*
* @param string $tinyurl The tinyurl for the picture
* @return string The tinyurl code for the picture
* @author Andreas Creten
**/
private function tinyurl_to_tinyurl_code($tinyurl) {
// Try to remove the crap out of the tiny url
$tinyurl = str_replace(‘http://mobypicture.com/?&#8217;, ”, $tinyurl);
$tinyurl = str_replace(‘http://www.mobypicture.com/?&#8217;, ”, $tinyurl);
$tinyurl = str_replace(‘http://moby.to/&#8217;, ”, $tinyurl);

return $tinyurl;
}
}

?>

Related articles

• Mobypicture Implements New Hashtag Service (socialmedia.biz)
• 203 Photo APIs: Flickr, Foursquare and Yahoo Image Search (programmableweb.com)
• That’s why Nokia was far more useful than iPhone. (ungeekiness.wordpress.com)

Share API

Reading and Creating Shares

Use the Share API to have a member share content with their network or with all of LinkedIn. This can be a simple short text update, similar to Twitter.  Or a URL with a title and optional photo. Or both.

You can also forward the shared content to Twitter and reshare another member’s share.

This feature replaces the deprecated Status Update API and fields.

Adding New Shares

To add a new share, you markup the content in XML and issue a  HTTP POST to the following URL:

URL

POST	http://api.linkedin.com/v1/people/~/shares

To have LinkedIn pass the status message along to a member’s tethered Twitter account, if they have one, modify the URL to include a query string of twitter-post=true.

Fields for the XML Body

Node	Parent Node	Required?	Value	Notes
share	—	Yes	Child nodes of share	Parent node for all share content
comment	share	Conditional	Text of member’s comment. (Similar to deprecated current-status field.)	Post must contain comment and/or (content/title and content/submitted-url). Max length is 700 characters.
content	share	Conditional	Parent node for information on shared document
title	share/content	Conditional	Title of shared document	Post must contain comment and/or (content/title and content/submitted-url). Max length is 200 characters.
submitted-url	share/content	Conditional	URL for shared content	Post must contain comment and/or (content/title and content/submitted-url).
submitted-image-url	share/content	Optional	URL for image of shared content	Invalid without (content/title and content/submitted-url).
description	share/content	Option	Description of shared content	Max length of 256 characters.
visibility	share	Yes	Parent node for visibility information
code	share/visibility	Yes	One of anyone: all members or connections-only: connections only.

Sample XML

Here is an example XML document:

<!--?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> 83% of employers will use social media to hire: 78% LinkedIn, 55% Facebook, 45% Twitter [SF Biz Times] -->http://bit.ly/cCpeOD Survey: Social networks top hiring tool - San Francisco Business Times http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2010/06/28/daily34.html</submitted-url> <submitted-image-url>http://images.bizjournals.com/travel/cityscapes/thumbs/sm_sanfrancisco.jpg</submitted-image-url> </content> <visibility> <code>anyone</code> </visibility> </share>

Response

Returns 201 Created on success. It will also provide a Location HTTP header with a URL for the created resource. However, at this time, you cannot retrieve the Share from that location. It’s there for future compatibility.

Resharing An Existing Share

When a member does a reshare, they can pass along a previously shared item to their network. This can either be as-is, or they can annotate the share to provide their own thoughts. The process is similar to creating a new share, but you provide an attribution/id value instead of a content block.

You can only reshare a share with a content block. If this block is empty, you will get a 400 error saying “Specified share {s28311617} has no content”.

Read Retrieving Share Information for instructions to retrieve these value using the API.

URL

POST	http://api.linkedin.com/v1/people/~/shares

Fields for the XML Body

Node	Parent Node	Required?	Value	Notes
share	—	Yes	Child nodes of share	Parent node for all share content
comment	share	No	Text of member’s comment. (Similar to deprecated current-status field.)	Max length is 700 characters.
attribution	share	Yes	Parent node for information on reshared document
id	share/attribution/share	Yes	id of reshared document	Currently in the format of s12345678, so is not guaranteed to be an integer.Post must contain id if it does not contain content and id must be from a share with a content block.
visibility	share	Yes	Parent node for visibility information
code	share/visibility	Yes	One of anyone: all members or connections-only: connections only.

Sample XML

Here is an example XML document:

<!--?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> Check out this story! I can't believe it. s24681357 -->connections-only

Response

Returns 201 Created on success. It will also provide a Location HTTP header with a URL for the created resource. However, at this time, you cannot retrieve the Share from that location. It’s there for future compatibility.

Retrieving Share Information

A particular member’s current share is detailed in their Profile API, so you can get a member’s current share by requesting:

GET	http://api.linkedin.com/v1/people/~:(current-share)

Use the ~, id, or public profile URL to identify the user.

To retrieve a stream of shares for the member or their member first degree network, use the Get Network Updates API resource requesting the SHAR update type.

For the specified member also use a query parameter of scope=self:

GET	http://api.linkedin.com/v1/people/~/network?type=SHAR&scope=self

Omit the scope for their first degree network:

GET	http://api.linkedin.com/v1/people/~/network?type=SHAR

You will receive:

<!--?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> s12345678 1279577156654 83% of employers will use social media to hire: 78% LinkedIn, 55% Facebook, 45% Twitter [SF Biz Times] -->http://bit.ly/cCpeOD</comment> <content> <id>123456789</id> <title>Survey: Social networks top hiring tool - San Francisco Business Times</title> <submitted-url>http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2010/06/28/daily34.html</submitted-url> <shortened-url>lnkd.in/abc123</shortened-url> <submitted-image-url>http://images.bizjournals.com/travel/cityscapes/thumbs/sm_sanfrancisco.jpg</submitted-image-url> <thumbnail-url>http://media.linkedin.com/media-proxy/ext...</thumbnail-url> </content> <visibility> <code>anyone</code> </visibility> <source> <service-provider> <name>LINKEDIN</name> </service-provider> <application> <name>Your Cool App</name> </application> </source> <current-share>

Fields for the XML Body

Beyond the fields listed above, you also receive:

Node	Parent Node	Value	Notes
id	share	Identifier for share.
timestamp	share	Time of posting in miliseconds since UTC. (Divide this number by 1000 to get the standard Unix timestamp.)
shortened-url	share/content	Short version of the submitted-url. If the submitted-url is generated via a URL shortener, this is the original URL and the submitted URL is the expanded version. Otherwise, this is a LinkedIn generated short URL using http://lnkd.in/.
resolved-url	share/content	The submitted-url unwound from any URL shortener services.
author	share/attribution/share	Information on the author of the original shared item.	Only appears when retrieving a reshare, not an original share.
name	share/source/service-provider	Platform where the share came from, such as LINKEDIN or  TWITTER.
name	share/source/application	Application where the share came from, such as the name of your application.

Adding your Twitter feed to your website with jQuery

Image via CrunchBase

If you or your company has a Twitter account, chances are you’d like to promote it and display your latest tweets from your website. Since many websites – both personal and increasingly business – are built on blogging software such as WordPress, this is usually achieved via a plugin, of which there are many out there.

But what if you simply want to add your live Twitter feed to a “normal” web page? Twitter itself provides a number of HTML widgets, but in this article I’ll show you how easy it is to achieve with a little bit of JavaScript, CSS, and jQuery.

In case you haven’t come across it before:

What is jQuery?

jQuery is a fast and concise JavaScript Library that simplifies HTML document traversing, event handling, animating, and Ajax interactions for rapid web development. It’s very powerful and makes life a whole lot easier when writing JavaScript. To include jQuery in your webpage, simply add the following within the <head> tags:

// <![CDATA[javascript" src="http://jqueryjs.google]]>
code.com/files/jquery-1.3.2.min.js"></script>

This uses the version that is hosted on Google Code, which saves you having to download the file.

Twitter API

Twitter itself provides a complicated API to allow access to all sorts of things. A lot of this complication arises around authentication, and necessarily so, but thankfully to simply retrieve a stream of tweets, authentication isn’t required (as long as the user in question hasn’t hidden their tweets).

First of all the API provides many different ways to obtain a user’s statuses. I won’t go into any of them other than the one that I favour, and this is the one that I’ll talk about here: user_timeline.

user_timeline

This returns a number of the most recent statuses posted by the user. It can return the data in different formats: XML, JSON, RSS and Atom. I favour  JSON, a lightweight data-interchange format, so this is the one that I will talk about.

You can use a number of parameters, and a full list of what they can do can be found on the Twitter API description for user_timeline. For now, I will only use a few relevant ones.

Give me the Tweets!

To retrieve the data for a particular Twitter account (I will use pcpro in this example here) you call the following:

$.getJSON(“http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline.json?
screen_name=pc_pro&count=10&callback=?”,
function(tweetdata) {
// do some stuff here
});

This will return the last 10 tweets from the pc_pro account in JSON format in the tweetdata variable. By default, retweeted tweets are not included in this feed, but to include them, add the &include_rts=1 parameter above, and they will be returned.

Of course we now have to make sense of this data, parse it and actually do something with it.

On our HTML page, define a <ul> and give it the id tweet-list. This is where we will hold our tweets. The above code is then extended to do the following:

$.getJSON(“http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline.json?screen_name=pc_pro&count=1O&callback=?&#8221;, function(tweetdata) {
var tl = $(“#tweet-list”);
$.each(tweetdata, function(i,tweet) {
tl.append(“<li>“” + tweet.text + “”– ” + tweet.created_at + “</li>”);
});
});

Some explanations: var tl = $(“#tweet-list”); grabs a reference to the <ul> element that we created above. We need this as we will add each tweet to it.

$.each(tweetdata, function(i,tweet) {… is the start of a jQuery loop, in this case iterating through each item in tweetdata and storing it temporarily in tweet. The following line then adds the tweet within an

item. The actual text of the tweet is contained within the text data member, and here we put double quotes around it, and the time it was created is contained within the created_at data member.

This will now display the last 10 tweets in list format on the relevant HTML page.

However, if there are links contained in the tweet, they won’t be clickable, and the created date is a bit long and not like the Twitter standard timelines such as “about a minute ago” or “two hours ago”. We can fix this with the following two functions urlToLink(); which we call on tweet.text:

function urlToLink(text) {
var exp = /(\b(https?|ftp|file):\/\/[-A-Z0-9+&@#\/%?=~_|!:,.;]*[-A-Z0-9+&@#\/%=~_|])/ig;
return text.replace(exp,”$1“);
}

and relTime(); which we call on tweet.created_at:

function relTime(time_value) {
time_value = time_value.replace(/(\+[0-9]{4}\s)/ig,””);
var parsed_date = Date.parse(time_value);
var relative_to = (arguments.length > 1) ? arguments[1] : new Date();
var timeago = parseInt((relative_to.getTime() – parsed_date) / 1000);
if (timeago < 60) return ‘less than a minute ago’;
else if(timeago < 120) return ‘about a minute ago’;
else if(timeago < (45*60)) return (parseInt(timeago / 60)).toString() + ‘ minutes ago’;
else if(timeago < (90*60)) return ‘about an hour ago’;
else if(timeago < (24*60*60)) return ‘about ‘ + (parseInt(timeago / 3600)).toString() + ‘ hours ago’;
else if(timeago < (48*60*60)) return ‘1 day ago’;
else return (parseInt(timeago / 86400)).toString() + ‘ days ago’;
}

So we need to change the above line to the following:

tl.append(”

“” + urlToLink(tweet.text) + “”– ” + relTime(tweet.created_at) + “

“);

This will be called when the HTML page is loaded (or you can load it some other time, it’s up to you of course) and this is done using jQuery by inserting the code within:

$(document).ready(function() {
// code here
});

which basically calls the code when the entire DOM has been loaded.

End Result

The main difference is the URL in included in the &.getJSON() call which should be:

http://api.twitter.com/1/account-name/lists/list-name/statuses.json?callback=?

where account-name is the name of the account, in this case pc_pro, and list-name is the name of the list, in this case staff.

Related Articles

• Tech Note: Creating Tweet Buttons Dynamically (littlegreenfootballs.com)
• JQuery Templates, Data Link, and Globalization (weblogs.asp.net)
• Real Time Twitter Search via Websocket or Comet using the Atmosphere Framework (jfarcand.wordpress.com)
• 15 Way Cool and Useful jQuery Plugins For Web Design and Development | CreativeFan (creativefan.com)
• Cached Commons (cachedcommons.org)
• Tech Tweets for 4-Oct-2010 (elijahmanor.com)

Quick tip: paths and URLs in WordPress

Image via CrunchBase

The direct reason for this was one of their code examples and the authors apparent incomplete knowledge of the WordPress API‘s most basic functions and constants. In that example, he does the following:

define(

‘MY_WORDPRESS_FOLDER’,

$_SERVER[‘DOCUMENT_ROOT’]

);

define(

‘MY_THEME_FOLDER’,

str_replace(“”,’/’,dirname(__FILE__))

);

define(

‘MY_THEME_PATH’,

‘/’ . substr(

MY_THEME_FOLDER,

stripos(MY_THEME_FOLDER,’wp-content’)

That annoyed me, quite a bit. Why? Well because if people write articles about stuff like custom write panels, I expect them to know a bit about the basics of the WordPress API. And well, the WordPress API has constants and functions for these things. So let me introduce you to them in the same order as the author of the articles did his defines above:

ABSPATH constant

Not only is their method inconvenient, it’s wrong for a lot of installs. You see, some people install WordPress in a subdirectory, and depending on what you need, there are two different paths you might need. ABSPATH is a constant that always returns the home of WordPress. So if WordPress is in the wp/ subdirectory, it would give you something like: /home/username/public_html/wp/. If WordPress were installed in the root, it would just return /home/username/public_html/. Now I don’t know how they’re using it, as it’s not used in this particular article, but they’d have to be very cautious with that.

TEMPLATEPATH constant

The second two things they’re doing are possibly even weirder. First they define a constant MY_THEME_FOLDER, which is basically the path to the current theme. WordPress has a very convenient constant for that: TEMPLATEPATH. Since they’re using it in an include, that’s probably what they need. Would save about 4 lines of code. Note that what they call a “folder” is actually a path.

get_template_directory_uri()

This is were they really go wrong. You see, they define a constant MY_THEME_PATH, and then use it as a URL in a call to wp_enqueue_style(), in other words: to enqueue a style sheet. Now paths and URLs are different animals altogether, and they don’t mix well. Take this example:

1 My blog is installed in a subdirectory /wp/

2 Because of that MY_THEME_FOLDER has been defined as follows:

/home/user/public_html/wp/wp-content/themes/example-theme

3 The code that sets MY_THEME_PATH turns that into:

/wp-content/themes/example-theme

4 The stylesheet is now included with the following path:

/wp-content/themes/example-theme/custom/book_panel.css

5 This causes a 404 (file not found error) because that directory simply doesn’t exist! It should have been:

/wp/wp-content/themes/example-theme/custom/book_panel.css

The proper way of doing the enqueue would thus have been the following:

wp_enqueue_style(

‘my_meta_css’,

get_template_directory_uri(). ‘/custom/book_panel.css’

);

Conclusion

I hope you understand why this annoys me. This is exactly the kind of coding that gives WordPress coders out there a bad name, as 5 – 10% of people out there trying this will not get it to work. If you want to prevent from making such mistakes, there’s plenty of resources to learn about these things, or look them up. Two starting points would be the codex and my own cross reference of the WordPress source along with its very convenient WordPress source search function.

Related Articles

• How to Setup Multiuser in WordPress 3.0 (kimwoodbridge.com)
• 16 Vital Checks Before Releasing a WordPress Theme (net.tutsplus.com)
• How to Disable and Remove Shortlink Link Rel Hook in WordPress Header (mydigitallife.info)
• WordPress SEO Optimization: Enable Gzip Encoding and Caching (seochat.com)
• WordPress Fat-Loss Diet to Speed Up & Ease Load (line25.com)